TAJIK-AFGHAN INTERRELATIONS TODAY AND THEIR FUTURE PROSPECTS
Abstract
The Republic of Tajikistan and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan1 have all the prerequisites for developing good-neighborly relations: a long common border stretching 1,344 km,a common historical past, common cultural values, traditions, and customs, a common religion, and a common language. According to different estimates, Tajiks comprise between 25% and 34% of the population of Afghanistan, where more than 40 nationalities live who speak 30 languages. More than half of the population speak Dari (as the language of the Tajiks of Afghanistan is called), which is one of the two official state languages of this republic. Until 1936, the language of the Tajiks of Afghanistan was the only state tongue, as well as the means of international communication.
The collapse of the U.S.S.R. and Tajikistan’s acquirement of state sovereignty coincided timewise with the mojaheds’ advent to power in Afghanistan in April 1992. Recognizing the Islamic State of Afghanistan (ISA) from the very first days of its existence, the Republic of Tajikistan declared its willingness to establish good-neighborly relations between the two sovereign states, which was demonstrated during the first official visit of a high-ranking Tajik government delegation headed by acting Chairman of the Tajik Supreme Soviet A. Iskandarov to Kabul in July 1992. This fact is noteworthy since it was the first visit by a government delegation of the already independent Tajik state, and the Afghan state was also headed by Tajiks. The country’s president was Burhanuddin Rabbani, the prime minister was a member of the Islamic Party of Afghanistan, Tajik Abdul Sabur Farid, and the minister of defense was Ahmad Shah Masud.
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Prior to 2004 the Islamic State of Afghanistan.
F. Holbek, B. Rabbani: “Rakhmonov—dostoyniy paren…,” available at [www.Asia-Plus.tj], 29 June, 2006.
Quoted from: A. Kniazev, Afganskiy krizis i bezopasnost Tsentral’noi Azii (XIX—nachalo XX vv.), Dushanbe, 2004,p. 181.
According to the Refugees Department of the Tajik Ministry of Labor and Employment, the total number of Tajik refugees in Afghanistan amounted to 60,939 people, although according to the Office of the United Nations High Commis-sioner for Refugees (UNHCR), some 90,000 people moved to Afghanistan at the beginning of the hostilities in Tajikistan.
See: K. Iskandarov, “Problemy mezhdunarodnykh otnoshenii Respubliki Tadzhikistan s Islamskim Gosudarstvom Afghanistan,” Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan, Economic and Political Science Se-ries, No. 1-2 (7), 1997, p. 74.
See: Biznes i politika, August 1996.
F. Holbek, op. cit.
Ibidem.
“Statement by the President of the Republic of Tajikistan Emomali Rakhmon and Chairman of the Islamic Reviv-al Movement of Tajikistan S.A. Nuri of 19 May, 1995,” in: Doroga mira, Documents of the inter-Tajik talks, Dushanbe,1997, pp. 150-151.
We, the members of the Tajik delegation at the first international conference dedicated to the memory of Ahmad Shah Masud and held on 7-8 September, 2002, met with Burhanuddin Rabbani at his home in Kabul and had the opportu-nity to talk to him for two hours.
ITAR-TASS, Alma-Ata, 4 October 1996.
A. Kniazev, op. cit., p. 202.
F. Holbek, op. cit.
See: K. Iskandarov, op. cit., p. 75.
Calculated according to data obtained at the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of the Republic of Tajikistan.
See: Tajikistan’s Foreign Economic Activity, Statistics Collection, Dushanbe, 2007, p. 341.
Socioeconomic Situation in the Republic of Tajikistan, January-October 2007, Dushanbe, 2007, p. 102.
[http:// www/president.tj], 27 August, 2006.
See: G. Petrov, “Tajikistan’s Hydropower Resources,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 3 (21), 2003, p. 154.
From the speech of A. Khabirov at the international conference “Afghanistan and Regional Security: Five Years after the Taliban” (Dushanbe, 6-7 December, 2006).
A contract is signed in Kabul for 500 million dollars on the transmission of electric power through Afghanistan,available at [http://www.Afghanistan.ru].
Speech by Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon at the Second Conference of the Central Asian and South Asian Countries on the Sale of Electric Power, 27 October, 2007, available at [http://www.president.tj].
See: G. Rajabekov, Ekonomicheskie problemy poslevoennogo vosstanovleniia i razvitiia energetiki Afganistana,Ph.D. (Econ.) Dissertation, Moscow, 2002, p. 156.
Speech by Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon at the Second Conference of the Central Asian and South Asian Countries on the Sale of Electric Power, 27 October, 2007.
See: F. Jonmakhmadov, “Narkosituatsiia v Afghanistane i rol Tadzhikistana v borbe protiv kontrabandy narkotik-ov,” in: Afganistan i bezopasnost Tsentral’noi Azii, Bishkek, Dushanbe, 2006, Iss. 3, p. 220.
Ibid., p. 216.
See: Kabul Weekly, 29 August, 2007.
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